Geir Lundestad - The World’s Most Prestigious Prize: The Inside Story of the Nobel Peace Prize

For twenty-five years, from 1 January 1990 to 31 December 2014, I was the Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and the Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The committee, which has five members selected by the Norwegian Parliament (Storting), is responsible for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Institute is in many ways the secretariat of the committee. I enjoyed my job a great deal. That is why I chose to stay for such a long period of time.

The contact with the Peace Prize laureates was certainly the most stimulating part of my job. During my twenty-five years I met virtually all of them. I played an important role in the entire selection process, from the submission of all the many nominations for the Peace Prize, to the detailed evaluations of the most relevant names for each year, to the award ceremony on 10 December each year. During the Nobel days in December I followed in the wake of practically every step the laureates took.

The laureates were very different. Some of them belonged on the political left, somewhat fewer on the political right. However, most of them had two things in common. They had a vision of what they wanted to achieve in their lives, and most of them had shown considerable political courage in trying to make that vision a reality. Some of them faced the most difficult of circumstances. A few were not even able to come to Oslo to receive their awards.

After I left office in 2014, I wrote two books in Norwegian about the Nobel Peace Prize. The first one, Fredens Sekretr. 25 r med Nobelprisen (The Secretary of Peace. 25 Years with the Nobel Prize; 2015), received a great deal of attention and became a bestseller in Norway. The second, Drmmen om fred p jord. Nobels fredspris fra 1901 til i dag (The Dream about Peace on Earth. The Nobel Peace Prize from 1901 to Today; 2017), was more academic in nature and drew less on my own personal experiences.

This book in English draws on both these Norwegian volumes. The historical sections are primarily derived from the second. These parts are based on documents in the historical archives available in the library of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and on literature written by both historians and participants in the process, be they former committee members or the laureates themselves. The sections on the years from 1990 up to the present are derived from Fredens Sekretr.

As the Nobel Peace Prize has received more and more attention, many books and articles have been published about aspects of its history. Although some of these have presented useful details about the committees work, this volume is the first real insider account of the work of the Nobel Committee. The statutes of the Nobel Foundation, which regulate the work of all the Nobel committees and all the Nobel prizes, state that the varying opinions of the committee members should not be revealed. Therefore, even in this book the views of individual committee members will not be spelled out. In most other respects I have tried to be as open as possible. The Nobel Peace Prize plays a role, however limited, in international politics in todays world. It is important that the information about the prize be as complete and as credible as possible. It is my hope that this book will represent a step forward in that respect.

I would like to thank Sin Mackie for translating the book into English, and literary agent Hans Petter Bakketeig for his work to secure other translations. Dominic Byatt, Publisher in Social Science and Humanities at Oxford University Press, has supported my work for many, many years. Celine Louasli and Sethuraman Lakshmanan at OUP, along with freelancer Joshua Hey, were most professional in transforming the manuscript into book form. I would also like to thank Bjrn Helge Vangen and Marte Salvesen at the Nobel Institute library for their technical assistance.

My wife Aase, our sons Erik and Helge, and our grandchildren Jrgen, Oscar, Alfred, Helmer, Sebastian, and Ferdinand have provided the enthusiasm which is necessary for a retired academic to continue his work even in formal retirement.

Geir Lundestad

Oslo, February 2019